The Complete Essays of John Galsworthy eBook

I found it. I had some conversation with that
farmer. ‘That’s right,’ he
said, ’but who was to know? I couldn’t
have my sheep worried. The brute had blood on
his muzzle. These curs do a lot of harm when
they’ve once been blooded. You can’t
run risks."’ Our friend cut viciously at a
dandelion with his stick. “Run risks!”
he broke out suddenly: “That was it from
beginning to end of that poor beast’s sufferings,
fear! From that fellow on the bicycle, afraid
of the worry and expense, as soon as it showed signs
of distemper, to myself and the man with the pitch
fork—­not one of us, I daresay, would have
gone out of our way to do it—­a harm.
But we felt fear, and so by the law of self-preservation,
or what ever you like—­it all began, till
there the poor thing was, with a battered head and
a hole in its neck, ravenous with hunger, and too
distraught even to lap my bread and milk. Yes,
and there’s something uncanny about a suffering
animal—­we sat watching it, and again we
were afraid, looking at its eyes and the way it bit
the air. Fear! It’s the black godmother
of all damnable things!”

Our friend bent down, crumpling and crumpling at his
dog’s ears. We, too, gazed at the ground,
thinking of, that poor lost puppy, and the horrible
inevitability of all that happens, seeing men are what
they are; thinking of all the foul doings in the world,
whose black godmother is Fear.

“And what became of the poor dog?” one
of us asked at last.

“When,” said our friend slowly, “I’d
had my fill of watching, I covered it with a rug,
took this fellow away with me, and went to bed.
There was nothing else to do. At dawn I was
awakened by three dreadful cries—­not like
a dog’s at all. I hurried down. There
was the poor beast—­wriggled out from under
the rug-stretched on its side, dead. This fellow
of mine had followed me in, and he went and sat down
by the body. When I spoke to him he just looked
round, and wagged his tail along the ground, but would
not come away; and there he sat till it was buried,
very interested, but not sorry at all.”

Our friend was silent, looking angrily at something
in the distance.

And we, too, were silent, seeing in spirit that vigil
of early morning: The thin, lifeless, sandy-coloured
body, stretched on those red mats; and this black
creature—­now lying at our feet—­propped
on its haunches like the dog in “The Death of
Procris,” patient, curious, ungrieved, staring
down at it with his bright, interested eyes. 1912.